Grass-fed beef in the Dominican Republic

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puryear270

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Aug 26, 2009
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Nacional and La Sirena have Angus beef, though it is frozen. I'm assuming it is imported, because it makes good hamburgers.
They also have frozen steaks, though I have not bought any.

The local hamburger meat is good for meatballs and meatloaf. In fact, I like it better for meatloaf because it is so lean.

I have made a green pepper steak with local beef that I cut thinly across the grain. It was good.

Though I have yet to try it, I think the local beef would also be good for fajitas if cut across the grain and marinated overnight with naranja agria (or lemon and orange juice combination).
 
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tommeyers

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Jan 2, 2012
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Reporting back: my dry aged beef was very good. It started as a a common cut it ended as a reasonably tender and tasty. My steps: 1) wash in water 2) salt thoroughly, rub then rinse 3) dry and place on paner towel on a plate 4) in meat drawer of refrig for 10 days. 5) remove from refrig, trim off dried surface. 6) cook 7) enjoy

I used a piece that was smaller than i usually use but the results were good although waste as a percent was high.
 
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mountainannie

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Dec 11, 2003
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I have given up on the beef here except the hamburger which .. once it is in chili or meat loaf.. highly seasoned.. is just fine.. but the pork here is so much better than the beef at home that I just use that. They use the center part of the pork chop for a cut that they call "cubito" and I just grill that .. and it is tender and wonderful.. really better than beef.

My first experience with beef here really was also my first experience with "shoe leather"....
 
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mountainannie

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Dec 11, 2003
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Cooking Light: Five-ingredient meat recipes
Another lesson, then, about grass-fed beef: It's not only about the grass, but also the breed, and the cow. We were looking for a lower-fat cow, so we chose the Brangus.
Though lean, it was still blanketed with a jacket of fat that would play a flavor role in the evolution of the meat. The fat would mostly get trimmed away during the butchering, but before then it would protect the meat during the dry-aging period, usually 10 to 14 days, in which the carcass hangs in a cold locker while natural enzymes break down tough muscle fiber and tenderize the meat.

The grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef debate - CNN.com
It's worth noting that although the best steak-house steaks are dry-aged, most supermarket beef is wet-aged in a plastic vacuum-sealed bag that prevents shrinkage but also precludes the concentration of beefy flavor that occurs with water loss.
The amount of fat cover also determines how much is available to go into the ground beef -- which we ordered in 85/15 and 90/10 meat-to-fat ratios. The fat on our grass-fed cow looked different from the fat we have been accustomed to cooking.
Compared with the bright, white fat of conventional beef, grass-fed fat is often yellower, stemming from the higher levels of beta-carotene. And as we would learn, the quantity and the quality of our cow's fat would play a key role in cooking.


I have French friends who always freeze their beef before they use it, saying that this helps break down the enzymes.. and that the issue is how the meat is butchered here..
 
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